A Father's Ruminations
by An LOTR Freak
Summary: A night of horror turns into a night of contemplation as Nessie discovers what it really means to be a Cullen and Edward realizes just how fragile his daughter's strength can be.


AN: if I owned Twilight you would be buying this in nice shiny hard-cover instead of reading it where you are.

~000~

He watches the lights swirl quietly back and forth through the darkness. Blue and red. Blue. Red. Blue. Red. He cradles she who is both a child and not a child. The shivering beneath his sensitive fingertips bothers him and he wishes he could do something about it; but she had wanted to stay and he would not deny her. It was something she perhaps needed to see anyway as much as it broke his heart to show her.

_Before, it was just a distasteful obligation. Any normal child's equivalent of eating vegetables, keeping the adults around you appeased, indulging a seemingly trivial insistence even when the sweetest of temptations surrounded you and it tasted so horrible._

She had grown so much, and her ability to learn paled next to even the most brilliant of humans. Yes, the mind certainly learned, but it was the heart that desperately needed to understand. He had learned not so long ago himself that no matter what you have heard or seen, experiencing things for yourself, feeling emotions, controlling them, using them, was something all together different. Extraordinarily so.

_At times you wondered why; I know you have and I understand that as well. You are sired of a vampire. Your instincts are young and strong and why should you not answer them? Were not instincts honed for survival?_

They looked on in silence as the stretcher was gently swathed in white cloth and the body it bore was carted slowly and carefully into the waiting ambulance. There was little fuss left to speak of among the humans. Quiet murmurs of conversation, the subliminal flip and caress of paper, the gentle hum of crickets and other night life continuing, undisturbed by the lingering sense of loss, in the forest eves beyond.

…_But now you see the truth of that heritage. That lethally cold arrogance, the pain it causes them even though they are too numb and ignorant to feel it. _

The silence beyond them was solemn.

But the silence within his little one was deafening.

He had promised no harm to them.

_Have you ever wondered, dear one, why so many of our kind walk alone? Why so many covens are small and so easily broken? I honestly now believe it is because they have nothing. They drive it away with those same instincts that are supposed to help them. _

With a coven nine members strong and the wolves besides the oath was almost as unnecessary as it had proved useless. He had done damage anyway to one of them at least, though he couldn't have known, and Edward knew, as much as he wanted to be angry, would never even have thought to ask.

No, now there was only grim acknowledgement of the deed; resigned acceptance of its consequences and what they spoke about their own endless nature.

Now, there was only the statement of an equal fact that haunted the mind of his only child: _'She was my friend.'_

_Now you can see the lengths you must go so those instincts don't destroy you. Instincts are raw, my precious one. It is the whole self that is beautiful._

He spoke aloud, keeping his voice low, quiet and grave, hoping to pierce through her dark void of pain with gentle concern: "Do you see now, Nessie? Do you see the pain it causes?" He softly tilted her chin so that their eyes burned into one another, one with helplessness, and the other with an understanding that too many years had brought. "_This_ is why we live the way that we do. So we don't have to be the instruments of their deaths. We don't have to kill our friends and family; what we love. We can keep them safe and happy instead."

_By the same token of nature, so too are you also human, equally dangerous instincts to indulge in, my darling, as we all could tell you. Yet some of those human instincts will help you now in the coming months, in the struggle you fight anew._

She said nothing but returned to staring out into darkness and the lights. He sighed and trailed off into silence as he stroked her hair. She would make of it what she could and with time the shock and sting would ease somewhat, though she could never forget. But that did not stop his own mind from contemplating the cliff he found her teetering on, that did not stop his speaking to her heart with his thoughts even if she would never hear them in her mind.

_Nothing with a heart beat would ever hesitate to improvise; it is its nature to change. The heart cannot, will not be alone forever. You've learned, as your mother has, in full, what the rest of us have managed to piece together only after years of looking for something we could not even name, having to gather all the scattered pieces of the humanity we'd given up on._

"Renesme, sometimes we don't always achieve the purpose we think we are set out for…sometimes the purpose finds us." He hugged her closer for a moment and at her silent nod he turned and melted into the darkness of nature.

It doesn't matter that they are only humans or only animals…it is the fact that they **are**.Once that fact is recognized, there is only the matter that they can **be** anything.

~FIN~

AN: So here I am again (finally!) after a long hiatus of watching and reading what everyone else has been inspired with/by. I'm not sure where the inspiration for this one came from, it's been months since I've actually had it written down on paper, but unlike most of my inspirations it came mostly in one sit down. (the mad scramble to find paper of any shape/way/form right-now-before-I-forget-it-all!! and the resulting subsequent mess of putting all those annoyingly small sticky notes that I ended up with back into thought-process order not-withstanding.)

Anyway, as I try to do with all my works a big huge shout out goes to my Beta-reader, the one that neither (I'm assuming) snow, various degrees of subzero temperatures, and evil movie editing software causing huge computer melt downs, can stop!! ^^ Whoo hoo! She's the best Beta-reader in the whole wide world and I wouldn't have it any other way!

NOTE ON POWER PLAYS: I have NOT abandoned it! Inufluff34 your review made my heart lift. THANKS SO MUCH for EVERYONE WHO REVIEWS! But…it's going to be a while. If anyone has any kind of suggestions they would be appreciated; but at this point I have scenes sketched out for way later in the story and no way to get to them. Never you fear I will continue forward, but you're going to have to be patient! Enough of my blabber then, Ja Ne!


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